Disability tax could be on ballot next spring

Show you Care campaign gathering signatures

Kane County voters could see a tax increase request on next spring's ballot that would generate about $12 million annually for services for the developmentally disabled.

Advocates are working to educate residents about the need for the money, while opponents say the community cannot afford more taxes.

The proposal would tax property at 0.1 percent of its assessed value, and the money would be distributed by a disability board, made up of people from throughout the county, that would hire agencies to support independent living, jobs, therapy, transportation and supportive care for those with development disabilities.

For the owner of a $182,000 house, the average tax increase would be about $55 a year.

"We're not insensitive to the fact that this is an additional cost, but we balance the additional cost with the enormous good that is done and the lives that are enriched and we say to ourselves that this is the right thing to do," said Patrick Flaherty, vice chair of the Association for Individual Development board of directors.

The campaign, "Show You Care Kane," has collected more than 34,000 signatures — almost two times the roughly 18,000 required to place the referendum on the ballot, said Lynn O'Shea, president and CEO for the association, a Fox Valley nonprofit that provides services to people with developmental disabilities. The group must still formally submit its signatures to the county and survive any possible challenges to them before the measure could appear on the spring 2014 local election ballot.

Last year, the association, along with several other organizations in the county, began collecting signatures after efforts to place the referendum on previous ballots through a county board vote failed.

Several years ago, the association recognized a need to establish a local funding source to provide services for people with developmental disabilities because of a decline in state and federal funding, Flaherty said.

Since then, advocates say, the need has only grown and will continue to grow.

The campaign estimates that special education programs in the county serve about 16,000 children and that about half of them will later in life need the types of services the referendum would fund.

"Kane County has, like many other counties in this state, an enormous unfunded and unmet need for services," Flaherty said. "The federal and state funding is declining and is erratic from year to year. There is no stable reliable source of funding that service providers can count on."

Allen Skillicorn, an East Dundee village trustee and spokesman for Kane Cares About Taxes, said the group has not officially come out against the referendum. But he opposes the tax because he thinks it would be an inefficient use of money in a county that already has some of the highest taxes in the nation.

"I just think that it's probably not the best use of our resources to increase property taxes," Skillicorn said.

He cited a report by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Tax Foundation that found the county's property taxes are 30th highest in the nation.

"I'm not against helping people, but it doesn't seem appropriate to add another layer of government," Skillicorn said. "Even though I am sympathetic and compassionate to people with disabilities, I'm also sympathetic and compassionate to people who can't afford to stay in their homes."

Skillicorn said that instead efforts should go toward lobbying the state to change the tax code.

But that's an unrealistic goal, supporters of the referendum say.

"Illinois just doesn't have the resources to do it," St. Charles District 303 board member Corinne Pierog, who is a member of the campaign's Community Leadership Team.

More than 1,000 Kane County residents are currently on the waiting list for state's Prioritization for Urgency of Need for Services, a database of individuals with developmental disabilities who are connected to services when funding is available, according to the state Department of Human Services website.

Flaherty said thousands more aren't even on the state's radar.

"We don't want to be in a county in which we warehouse people with disabilities," Flaherty said. "We want to have services and facilities and opportunities that give people with disabilities a chance to live a life of dignity and purpose and that's our responsibility as a local community to do that."